If they don’t look familiar, that’s because they haven’t been in this position since the current E-Rabs were being born.

East (9-3, 6-1) has not had a winning record, either overall or in the NIC-10, since it tied for the conference title 17 years ago. The E-Rabs haven’t even been above seventh place in 13 years.

But the E-Rabs served notice early this year with a win over Harlem, their first over the Huskies in more than a decade, then followed that up by beating Guilford, which has finished in the top half of the league nine years in a row, and sweeping a Freeport team that reached the Class 3A sectional finals last year.

“It feels great knowing that the school hasn’t put in a winning record in forever and we’re a part of the team that is changing that and, hopefully, changing it for the future too,” senior closer Jared Bloom said. “We’re making big strides.

“I knew we’d be good this year, but I had no idea we’d be this good.”

Neither did the local newspaper. The Register Star’s NIC-10 baseball beat writer picked East to finish ninth.

But others did see it coming.

“I knew they were ready,” said Harlem coach Doug Livingston, who has won 301 games in 11 years with the Huskies. “I thought they were going to be in the top half of the conference for sure. And it’s good for our conference that these guys are winning games. It’s making our conference better.”

Livingston also included Jefferson, which gave Harlem (6-2 in the NIC-10) its other loss.

Jefferson (3-5) is better, but the J-Hawks aren’t challenging for the league title halfway through the season. East is. The E-Rabs are tied in the loss column for first with Boylan, one game ahead of Harlem and league favorite Hononegah, the only NIC-10 team the E-Rabs have lost to.

The Harlem win was the big one, but the E-Rabs didn’t treat it that way.

“It was a good experience for the kids to finally knock off one of the perennial powerhouse teams, but we tried to keep it cool and not get ahead of ourselves,” said coach Jimmy Williams, who played for East in the 1990s.

“It was a great win,” senior shortstop Noah Nunez agreed, “but we’re not going to stop there. We want to keep going, keep working and hope for a regional title. That’s when we can really celebrate.”

East has been winning despite not holding a practice on their home field until last week. Or playing a home game until Monday because of this wet, cold spring.

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“We’ve just been in the gym hitting, trying to do the best we could under the circumstances that Mother Nature prepared for us, and once we got on the field it showed,” Nunez said.

Handling adversity has been key to East’s turnaround. East had a .500 overall record last year at 16-16, its first in 16 years, but was only eighth in the NIC-10 at 6-12.

“We were young, and we were down on ourselves for most of the games we lost,” junior catcher Vince Enna said. “But this year we’re playing through mistakes and keeping our heads up. We learned a lot last year.”

“Bad things can snowball,” coach Williams said. “In past years, we had that problem. If you had a bad at-bat or kicked a ball in the field, they carried it on the rest of the game. Not this team.”

No, not this team, most of whom also played together on a travel team this summer.

It’s a new day at East.

“It’s really exciting,” Nunez said. “I’m excited every day to wake up and know I can play another game for the E-Rabs.”